PRIMITIVE WARFARE II ON THE RESEMBLANCE OF THE WEAPONS OF EARLY MAN, THEIR VARIATION, CONTINUITY, AND DEVELOPMENT OF FORM.[126] (continued 2)

Cateia.

The possible employment of the boomerang in Europe has been made the subject of occasional speculation amongst antiquarian writers. Having been used in Egypt, and perhaps in Assyria, there is no good reason for doubting that it may have spread from thence to the north-west. In a learned paper on the subject in the Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, vol. xix (1843), § ‘Literature,’ p. 22, Pl. i, ii, Mr. Samuel Ferguson endeavours to prove that the ‘cateia’ mentioned by classical authors was the boomerang. He quotes several passages, and amongst them one from Virgil (Aeneid vii. 741), in which mention is made of a people accustomed to whirl the ‘cateia’ after the Teutonic manner. In the Punica of Silius (iii. 327), one of the Libyan tribes which accompanied Hannibal to Italy is described as being armed with a bent or crooked ‘cateia’. Isidore, Bishop of Seville, a writer of the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, described the ‘cateia’ as ‘a species of bat, which, when thrown, flies not far, by reason of its weight, but where it strikes, it breaks through with extreme impetus, and if it be thrown with a skilful hand, it returns back again to him who dismissed it’ (Origines, xviii. 7. 7).

Strabo also (pp. 196-7) describes the Belgae of his time, as using ‘a wooden weapon of the shape of a grosphus, which they throw out of hand ... which flies farther than an arrow, and is chiefly used in the pursuit of game’.

General Conclusions relative to the Boomerang.

Those who desire further information relative to its supposed use in Europe, cannot do better than refer to the paper from which I have quoted. Meanwhile, enough has been said to show:—(1) that the boomerang was used in many different countries at a very early period, and in a very primitive condition of culture, and that it was everywhere employed chiefly in the pursuit of game; (2) that it was everywhere constructed of wood, before it was copied in metal; (3) that in Australia it originated as a variety of the almond- or leaf-shaped sword, and was suggested by the natural curvature of the material out of which it was formed; (4) that the subsequent improvements by which its return flight was ensured, arose from a practical selection of suitable varieties, and was not the result of design, and (5) that the form of the boomerang passes by minute gradations into at least three other classes of weapons in common use by the same people, and may therefore be regarded as a branch variety of an original normal type of implement, used by the most primitive races as a general tool or weapon.

Development of the Club.

Amongst other implements used for war, the form of which appears to be derived from the same common source as those already described, may be included the Australian club, and the wamera or throwing stick. I have arranged in Plate XVI, diagram 8, figs. 130 to 137, a series of Australian clubs, showing a transition from the plain stick, of equal size throughout, to one having a nearly round knob at one end. Nearly similar forms to some of these, from Africa, figs. 138 to 140, are also represented on the same diagram.

Contrivances for Throwing the Spear.

Amongst the Australian ‘wameras’, there are so many varieties, that it is next to impossible to speculate upon the priority of any particular form, unless the plain stick, with a projecting peg at one end, may be regarded as certainly the simplest, and therefore the earlier form. The ‘wamera’ is held in the right hand, and the projecting peg at the end is fitted into a cavity at the end of the spear, which latter is held in the left hand, in the required direction, until just before the moment of throwing. The spear is then impelled to its destination by the wamera, which gives great additional impetus to the arm. Fig. 147 is a wamera from Nicol Bay, of exactly the same general outline as the sword already figured from that locality, figs. 61 and 62, except that one of the faces at the end of which the peg is fastened, is concave, and the other convex; this specimen is in the Christy Collection. The wamera assumes a great variety of forms; some, as for example fig. 142, resemble on a small scale the New Zealand paddle, the broad end being held in the hand, and the peg inserted in the small end; others, broad and flat, figs. 148 to 150, bulge out in the middle by successive gradations, until they approach the form of a shield. No reasonable cause that I am aware of, can be assigned for these different forms; beyond caprice, and the action of the law of incessant variation, which is constant in its operation amongst all the works of the aborigines.

The wamera is found on the north-west[166] and south-west[167] coasts of Australia, and Major Mitchell describes it in the east and central parts of the continent.[168]

That the wamera preceded the bow, appears probable from the fact that no bow is ever used in Australia, unless occasionally upon the north coast, where it is derived from the Papuans. The bow is not indigenous in New Zealand, or in any of those islands of the Pacific which are peopled by the Polynesian race; it belongs truly to the Papuans, and where it is used elsewhere in the Pacific Islands as a toy, it may very probably have been derived from their Papuan neighbours. The throwing stick is used in New Zealand, in which country Mr. Darwin describes the practice with them. ‘A cap,’ he says, ‘being fixed at 30 yards distance, they transfixed it with the spear delivered by the throwing stick, with the rapidity of an arrow from the bow of a practised archer.’[169] In New Guinea, Captain Cook saw the lance thrown 60 yards, as he believed, by the throwing stick.[170] I saw the Australians, now exhibiting on Kennington Common (1868), throw their spears with the wamera nearly 100 yards extreme range, but as they practised only for range, I had no opportunity of observing the accuracy of flight. Mr. Oldfield says that their practice has been much exaggerated by the European settlers, in order to justify acts on their part, which would otherwise appear cowardly. He says, that a melon having been put up at a distance of 30 yards, many natives practised at it for an hour without hitting it, after which an European, who had accustomed himself to the use of this weapon, struck it five times out of six with his spear. Klemm, on the other hand, has collected several accounts of their dexterity in the use of it; he says, that the range is 90 yards, and mentions that Captain Phillip received a wound several inches deep at 30 paces. At 40 paces, he says, the aborigines are always safe of their mark (l. c., p. 32). A sharp flint is usually fixed with gum into the handle of the wamera, which they use for sharpening the points of their spears.

The throwing stick (fig. 151) is used by the Esquimaux throughout the regions they inhabit. Frobisher[171] mentions it on the east, Captain Beechey on the north-west, and Cranz describes its use in Greenland.[172] Klemm says (l. c., p. 39), that the throwing stick used in the Aleutian Isles, differs from that of the Greenlander in having a cavity, to receive the end of the spear, instead of a projecting tang. The Esquimaux stick generally differs from the Australian in form, and has usually holes cut to receive the fingers, which by this means secure a firm grasp of the instrument. The custom of forming holes or depressions in an implement to receive the fingers was very widely spread in prehistoric times. I have specimens of stones so indented, used probably as hammers, from Ireland, Yorkshire, Denmark, and Central India. In the Christy Collection there is one precisely similar from the Andaman Isles.

The only other race that is known to make use of the throwing stick is the Purus-Purus Indians of South America, inhabiting a tributary of the Amazon. These people have no bow, and in many other respects resemble the Australians in their habits. Their throwing stick is called ‘palheta’; it has a projection at the end, to fit into the end of the spear, and is handled exactly in the same manner as the Australian ‘wamera’.[173]

Another kind of spear-thrower, consisting of a loop for the finger and a thong by which it is fastened to the spear, is used in New Caledonia, and Tanna, New Hebrides (fig. 152). On ordinary occasions this is carried by being suspended to an armlet on the left arm, but, when preparing for war, they fasten it on to the middle of their spears. I exhibit here, fig. 153, a precisely similar contrivance from Central Africa, from my collection. Judging by the spiral ferrule, at the end of the lance to which it is attached, it appears to be derived from Central or East Central Africa. This mode of increasing the range of the dart or javelin was well known to the ancients, and was called by the Greeks ἀγκύλη, and by the Romans ‘amentum’; it is represented on the Etruscan vases, and is figured in Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, from which the drawing given in fig. 154 is taken.[174] One of the effects produced by this contrivance was, doubtless, to give the weapon a rotary motion, and thereby to increase the accuracy of its flight, upon the same principle as the rifling of a bullet; but the range and velocity were also increased, by enabling the thrower, the tip of whose forefinger was passed through the loop of the ‘amentum’, to press longer upon the spear, and thus impart a greater velocity to it, in the same manner that the effect of the Australian wamera may be said to increase the length of the thrower’s arm. The Emperor Napoleon, who, as we all know, has paid great attention to these weapons of the ancients, caused experiments to be conducted, under his own personal supervision, at Saint Germain, the result of which showed that the range of a spear was increased from 20 to 80 meters by the use of this accessory.[175]

Transition from Club to Shield (Australia).

My next example of variation of form is taken from the Australian ‘heileman’, or shield. It may, on the first cursory consideration of the subject, appear fanciful to suppose that so simple a contrivance as the shield could require to have a history, or that the plain round target, for example, so common amongst many savage nations, could be the result of a long course of development. Surely, it may be said, the shells of tortoises or the thick hides of beasts would, from the first, have supplied so simple a contrivance. But the researches in palaeoethnology teach us that such was not the case; man came into the world naked and defenceless, and it was long before he acquired the art of defending himself in this manner. His first weapon, as I have already said, was a stone or a stick, and it is from one or other of these, that we must trace all subsequent improvements. The stick became a club, and it is to this alone that many of the earliest races trust for the defence of their persons. The Dinkas of East Central Africa have no shields, using the club, and a stick, hooked at both ends (Pl. XVI, fig. 170), to ward off lances.[176] The Shoua and the Bagirmi of Central Africa rarely carry shields, and they use a foreign name for it.[177] The Khonds, hill tribes of Central India, have never adopted the shield.[178] The inhabitants of Tahiti use no shield.[179] The Sandwich Islanders use no shield or weapon of defence, employing the javelin to ward off lances: like the Australians, and, like the Bushmen, they are very expert in dodging the weapons of their enemies. In Samoa the club is used for warding off lances, and the warriors frequently exercise themselves in this practice. The ‘kerri’ sticks of the Hottentots are used for warding off stones and assegais.[180]

The club head formed by the divergent roots of a tree (Pl. XVI, fig. 155), offers great advantages in enabling the warrior to catch the arrows in their flight, and this led to the use of the jagged mace-head form of club, which is here represented from many different localities. Fig. 155 is from Fiji, fig. 157 from Central Africa, fig. 156 from Australia, fig. 158 from New Guinea, and fig. 159 from the Friendly Isles. The curved clubs, of which a great variety are found in the hands of savages in every part of the world, are exceedingly well adapted to catch and throw off the enemy’s arrow. The Australian ‘malga’, or ‘leowel’, as it is called by the Australians now in this country, and already described (pp. 125-6), is used in this manner.

By degrees, instead of using the club as a general weapon, offensive and defensive, especial forms would be used for defence, whilst others would be retained for offensive purposes; but the shield for some time would continue to be used merely as a parrying instrument. Such it is in Australia. In its most primitive form, it is merely a kind of stick with an aperture cut through it in the centre for the hand. The fore part varies with the shape of the stem out of which it was made; in some it is round, in others flat. This form appears to have branched off into two varieties; one developed laterally, and at last assumed the form of a pointed oval, as represented in Plate XVI, figs. 165 to 169; these are frequently scored on the front with grooves to catch the lance points. The other variety appears to have assumed a pointed form in front, so as to make the spear glance off to one side, as represented in figs. 160 to 164. The Australians are exceedingly skilful in parrying with these shields. One of the feats of the Australians now in this country, consists in parrying cricket balls thrown with full force by three persons at the same time. The ‘heileman’ is cut out of the solid tree and, like all their other weapons, invariably follows the grain of the wood.

In 1861, Mr. Oldfield, when engaged in collecting specimens of timber for the International Exhibition, came upon one of these shields, nearly finished, and abandoned, but only requiring a few strokes to detach it from the growing tree; and he noticed the immense time and labour it must have cost the native to construct it, not less than 30 cubic feet of wood having been removed in digging it out of the tree with no better tool than a flint fixed to the end of a stick. Trees of sufficient size for these shields are not found in all parts of Australia, and in those places where they are wanting, the natives only obtain them by traffic with other tribes. The same cause may also account, in some measure, for the varieties of their form, yet, notwithstanding these numerous varieties, they never leave the normal type throughout the continent, and you might as well expect to see the Australian using a firelock of native manufacture, as to find in his hands the circular flat shield which is common in Africa, America, and ancient Europe.

Transition from Club to Shield (Africa).

In Africa, the development of the shield appears to have followed precisely the same course, commencing with the plain stick or club, Pl. XVI, fig. 170, and passing through the varieties represented in figs. 171, 172, and 173, which are scarcely distinguishable from the Australian ‘heileman’, to the oval shield of the Kaffirs, fig. 174, and of the Upper Nile, figs. 175 and 176, which are of ox hide, but show their origin by a stick passing down the centre and grasped in the hand; with this stick they parry and turn off the lances of the assailant precisely in the same manner that the Australian employs the projecting point at the end of his oval shield. Judging by the side views represented in the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, similar shields were used by the ancients, and we may especially notice the Assyrian shield, of small dimensions, fig. 178, mentioned by Mr. Rawlinson as being represented in the Assyrian sculptures, and having projecting spikes on the fore part, to catch and throw off the enemy’s weapons (Five Great Monarchies (1864), vol. ii. p. 51).

Development of the Shield.

All these antique shields have one other feature in common with the shields of existing aborigines, viz. that they are held by a handle in the centre. It was only in a more advanced age, when armies began to fall into serried ranks, that the broad shield was introduced and held upon the left arm, a mode of carrying it ill adapted to the requirements of the light-armed combatants. Besides the oval, the shield took other forms, but appears always to have been narrow in its earliest developments: fig. 176 from the Upper Nile closely resembles in outline fig. 177 from the New Hebrides. Livy describes the shields of the Gauls in the attack of Mount Olympus, B.C. 189, as being too narrow to defend them against the missiles of the Romans, and he also describes them as brandishing their shields in a peculiar manner practised in their original country.[181] This must without doubt have been connected with the operation of parrying. Sir Walter Scott describes the Scotch parrying with their shields. Shields in the form of a figure 8 are met with in various countries; Captain Grant describes the Unyamwezi as carrying a shield of this form.[182] Fig. 179 from this Institution is from Central Africa, of a very primitive form. Fig. 180 is of the same shape from New Guinea, and the beautiful bronze shield, fig. 181[183], of the late Celtic period, in the British Museum, found in the Thames, appears to be of an allied form. Fig. 182 is an ox-hide shield of the Basutos; it is allied to that of the Kaffirs, Fig. 174, by having a stick at the back, and the peculiar wings with which it is furnished connect it with that of the Fans of the Gaboon, on the West Coast, fig. 183, which latter is of elephant hide and has no stick at the back. No connexion that I am aware of is known to have existed between these remote tribes, which are of totally different races, but the forms of their shields here represented must, I think, have been derived from a common source.

Concluding Remarks.

It would be quite impossible within the space of a single lecture to produce more than a very small portion indeed of the evidence which is available in support of my arguments. If the principles which I have enunciated are sound, they must be applicable to the whole of the arts of mankind and to all time. If it can be proved that a single art, contrivance, custom, or institution, sprang into existence in violation of the law of continuity, and was not the offspring of some prior growth, it will disprove my theory. If in the whole face of nature there is undoubted evidence of any especial fiat of creation having operated capriciously, or in any other manner than by gradual evolution and development, my principles are false.

It would be a violation of the law of continuity, for example, if the principles which I am now advocating, in common with many others at the present time, opposed as they are to many preconceived notions, were suddenly to receive a general and widespread acceptance. This also, like other offsprings of the human mind, must be a work of development, and it will require time and the labours of many individuals to establish it as the truth, if truth it be.

Meanwhile it may be well that I should briefly sum up the several points which I have endeavoured to prove on the present occasion.

I have endeavoured to prove in the first place, though I must here repeat that I have produced only a very small portion of the evidence on the subject, that all the implements of the stone age are traceable by variation to a common form, and that form the earliest; that their improvement spread over a period so long as to witness the extinction of many wild breeds of animals; that it was so gradual as to require no effort of genius or of invention; and that it was identical in all parts of the world.

I have shown in the second place, that all the weapons of the Australians which I have described, are traceable by variation to the same common form, or to forms equally as primitive as those of the stone age of Europe; that it is perfectly consistent with the phenomena observed, that these variations may have resulted, or at least may have in a great measure been promoted by accidental causes, such as the grain of the wood influencing the shape of the weapon; that they were not invented or designed for especial purposes, but that their application to such purposes may have resulted from a selection of the implements already in hand; and that by this process, the natives of Australia, during countless ages, may have crept on, almost unconsciously, from the condition of brutes, to the condition of incipient culture in which they are now found.

I have compared these weapons of the Australians with others of the same form in various parts of the world, showing grounds for believing that whenever we shall be able to collect a sufficient variety of specimens to represent the continuous progression of each locality, the modus operandi will be found to have been everywhere the same.

Lastly, I have alluded cursorily to the analogy which exists between the development of the arts and the development of species. It may be better to postpone any comprehensive generalization on this subject until a much larger mass of evidence has been collected and arranged. Sir Charles Lyell has devoted a chapter in his work on the Antiquity of Man to a comparison of the development of languages and the development of species. ‘We may compare,’ he says, 'the persistency of languages, or the tendency of each generation to adopt without change the vocabulary of its predecessor, to the force of inheritance in the organic world, which causes the offspring to resemble its parents. The inventive power which coins new words or modifies old ones, and adapts them to new wants and conditions as often as they arise, answers to the variety-making power in the animal creation.’ He also compares the selection of words and their incorporation into the language of a people, with the selection of species, resulting in both cases in the survival of the fittest (4th ed., 1873, p. 503).

Whilst, however, we dwell upon the analogy which exists between the phenomena of the organic world and the phenomena of human culture, we must not omit to notice the points of difference. The force of inheritance may resemble in its effects the principle of conservatism in the arts and culture of mankind, but they are totally dissimilar causes.

The variety-making power may resemble the inventive power of man; nothing, however, can be more dissimilar, except as regards results.

When, therefore, we find that like results are produced through the instrumentality of totally dissimilar causes, we must attribute the analogy to some prior and more potent cause, influencing the whole alike.

It might be premature to speculate upon the course of reasoning which this class of study is likely to introduce; this much, however, we may, I think, safely predict as the result of our investigation, that we shall meet with no encouragement to deify secondary causes.

Another subject to which we must necessarily be led by these investigations, although, as I before said, it does not fall actually within the scope of my paper, is the question of the unity or plurality of the human race.

The ethnologist and the anthropologist who has not studied the prehistoric archaeology of his own country compares the present condition of savages with that of the Europeans with whom they are brought in contact. He notices the vast disparity of intellect between them. He finds the savage incapable of education and of civilization, and evidently destined to fall away before the white man whenever the races meet, and he jumps at the conclusion that races so different in mental and physical characteristics, must have had a distinct origin, and be the offspring of separate creations. But the archaeologist traces back the arts and institutions of his own people and country until he finds that they once existed in a condition as low or lower than that of existing savages, having the same arts, and using precisely the same implements and weapons; and he arrives at the conclusion that the difference observable between existing races is one of divergence, and not of origin; that owing to causes worthy of being carefully studied and investigated, one race has improved, while another has progressed slowly or remained stationary.

In this conclusion he is borne out by all analogy of nature, in which he finds frequent evidences of difference produced by variation, but no one solitary example of independent creation. Are not all the branches of a young tree parts of the same organism; and yet one will be seen to throw up its shoots with a vigorous and rapid growth, whilst another turns towards the ground and ultimately decays? Not to mention the variations produced by the breeding of animals, with which we are all more or less familiar, we see under our own eyes families of men diverging in this manner. One branch, owing to causes familiar to us in everyday life, will become highly cultivated, whilst another continues to live on in a low condition of life, so that in the course of a few years the disparity, mental and physical, between these two branches, bearing the same name, will be greater, in proportion to the time of separation, than that which, in the course of countless ages, has separated the black from the white man.

At the present time there is a tendency to rectify these inequalities, whether in regard to our own or to other races, and there can be little doubt that in the course of time, all that remains of the various races of mankind will be brought under the influence of one civilization. But as this progressive movement is often led by men who have not made the races of mankind their study, they are perpetually falling into the error of supposing, that the work of countless ages of divergence, is to be put to rights by Act of Parliament, and by suddenly applying to the inferior races of mankind laws and institutions for which they are about as much fitted as the animals in the Zoological Gardens.

In conclusion, I have only a few words to say upon the defects of our ethnographical collections generally. It will be seen that in order to exhibit the continuity and progression of form, I have been obliged to collect and put together examples from many different museums; and, as it is, it will have been noticed that many links of connexion are evidently wanting. This is owing, in a great measure, to the very short period during which the arts and customs of primaeval races have been made the subject of scientific investigation; but it also arises from the absence of system on the part of travellers and collectors, who in former times appear to have had but little knowledge of the evidence which these specimens of the industry of the aborigines are destined to convey, and who have, therefore, neglected to bring home from the various regions they visited all the varieties of the several classes of implements which each country is capable of affording, thinking that one good example of a tool or weapon might be taken as a sample of all the rest.

I am not so presumptuous as to suppose that the particular arrangement, which I have adopted, may not require frequent modification as our evidence accumulates; but I trust that I shall at least have made it apparent to those who have followed the course of my argument, that without the connecting links which unite one form with another, an ethnographical collection can be regarded in no other light than a mere toy-shop of curiosities, and is totally unworthy of science.

Owing to the wide distribution of our Army and Navy, the members of which professions are dispersed over every quarter of the globe and have ample leisure for the pursuit of these interesting studies, this Institution possesses facilities for forming a really systematic collection of savage weapons, not perhaps within the power of any other Institution in the world. The time is fast approaching when this class of prehistoric evidence will no longer be forthcoming. The collection is already what, for this country, must be regarded as a good one, and if I may venture to hope that the remarks I have now the honour of making will be of service in collecting the materials for the improvement of it, I trust it may be thought that my labours and your patience will not have been thrown away.